Remembering the Best Boy

There is a comic that goes around Facebook quite often that sees Death coming to take a dog. The dog asks if he was a good boy, to which Death says he was the best boy. This comic always makes me think of one dog in particular that I have had the joy of knowing during my life. That good boy was my dog Shep, who literally just wandered into my life one day and made my life ever so much brighter just by his presence.

It all started one rainy day in Florida. My wife at the time and I were on our way to go out for something. I don’t remember what, and it’s not really important. What is important is when we went out to our car there was a dog in our yard. Now we lived out in the middle of nowhere quite literally. The road we lived on was a main road and we lived right next to a gas station, but it was a good 15-minute drive to the nearest town, and the closest house to ours was a good 5-minute drive away almost. So this wasn’t just some neighbors dog that had wandered down the street. He was wet and looked older and a bit grizzled. Considering we were out in the middle of just backroads and wooded land except for the main stretch of road, we weren’t too sure about trusting this dog to not just be some wild feral Shepherd-looking dog.

He stayed back from us as we went to the car and we figured he’d probably be gone by the time we came home, and sure enough, he was gone. We didn’t think too much about this dog the rest of the day until that night I went back outside to do some grilling and there he was again. There was something about him that called to me and I wasn’t sure what it was but I trusted he wouldn’t hurt me. I went inside and got an old can of dog food from when my wife’s parents had lived in the house we were staying in and took it out. The dog came up to me slowly. He seemed warier of me than I was of him, but then again I had spent most of my working life at veterinary hospitals working with the dogs in kennels. I overturned an old frisbee and put the canned food on it and as he ate I got a good look at him. He looked like your typical German Shepard in coloration but things were a little off about him. First, he was smaller than any Shepard I had seen before, and his fur, once you looked past the matted mess from the earlier rain, was a lot thicker than most Shepards. As he ate I also noticed his tongue was spotted black almost like a dalmatian's fur and I realized that he was a mutt probably mixed with another breed that had a black tongue. Eventually, we figured he was probably part Chow between the fur and the tongue differences.

After he finished eating, the dog came right up to me and just sat at my side while I cooked. He walked at my side when I went out the next day to get the mail as he had slept under our carport that night. The way he walked at my side was how a dog that had been trained would have walked when told to heel. So I knew he must have belonged to someone at one point. We asked if anyone at the gas station knew whose dog he may be and the only clue we got was that there had been a hunter that had stopped there the other day with several similar dogs but it hadn’t been anyone they had known. So not knowing whose dog it was or what to call him my wife suggested we call him Shep and that we take care of him until someone came looking for him. I agreed as Shep seemed to have become attached to me quite quickly. That day I gave Shep a bath with the hose and while getting him cleaned up I noticed that the people we thought had been his owners before had not treated him well. His nose was crooked as though it had been broken before and his teeth were not well taken care of with some missing and some broken. At this point, we decided that Shep would officially become our dog. Within the week, we had stocked up on food for him and gotten leashes and collars. No one had come looking for him and we figured the owners must have just dumped him. That was perfectly fine with us as Shep turned out to be one of the best and nicest dogs we had ever met. We took him to the Vet and she estimated that he was probably about 8 years old, so no spring chicken.

We set up a run for him in the backyard. A good 100-yard cable strung out with a cable down to his collar so he could get some good exercise. Somehow this dog always managed to undo the catch of the lead and we never figured out how. He’d run off for the day and then come back by that night for dinner. I built him a dog house outside which he decided was no good and only went in there to eat otherwise he dug a huge hole under his house and spent most of his time outside asleep there. We found out quickly he had to either be outside or totally inside the house as he had no clue what to make of screen doors or a screened-in porch. We were not entirely sure his old eyes could see the screen as he tended to just run right through it. We also found out that he had no idea how to play. He laid around and he would snuggle up to us but if we ever tried to throw a ball for him or something Shep just would watch the ball roll past and then look at us as though saying “Well what did you do that for?” It was sad to think of what his 8 years of life had been like, that he didn't even know how to play or act like a dog.

We loved him though and were determined to give him the best life he could now that he had found us. After having Shep for about a year and a half, my wife decided she wanted a divorce. Shep came with me then to move in with my parents in a new city as I tried to get back on my feet. Thankfully, my parents fell in love with Shep as quickly as I had, but their cat Jasmine was another matter. Shep always wanted to be friends with Jasmine but she would stay away from him and if he persisted in trying to be friendly she would give his nose a swat and show him who the boss of the house was. Shep was such a sweetheart and so gentle that he just took the cat's swats and kinda shrugged it off. It didn’t bother him in the least and that was just how Shep was, he was a chill furball. The only times Shep really got excited about anything was when it was time to eat and time for his walks. He always loved being outside, so luckily my parent's yard had been fenced in with a tall privacy fence they had put up. Shep got to spend a lot of time in the backyard digging as he loved to do. I swear that dog was part groundhog. He would dig holes so big you wouldn’t be able to find him because he’d disappear down into it. You’d look out the window and call his name and his head would pop up out of the hole like a gopher!

Now while Shep was a very gentle dog, there were a few things we learned we had to be careful of with him. The first was if we were to feed him cheese or lunch meat we had to either put it into the food bowl or drop it from above our heads. Shep loved those two foods so much that he would lunge for them like a great white shark. He didn’t mean to hurt us but he just got so excited about those foods that he wasn’t careful like he was with everything else. We also found out that if we gave him rawhide bones that we were to never try to take them from him. The only time we would ever hear Shep growl was if he thought you were going to take his rawhide toy from him. The last thing we found out about this gentlest of dogs was that while he would not hurt a fly he had no problems trying to eat turtles. How did we ever find this out you may ask? Well in my parent’s backyard right outside the gate there was a strip of grassy lot that ran between their yard and the back neighbor’s yard. Nothing could be built there as this grassy strip ran under power lines and was owned by the city power company that would come in like once a month or so to mow but otherwise did nothing with it. We tended to take the mower out when we did our yard though and we would mow just a simple path up and down the strip. However, in the long grass and small cacti that grew in this long plot of land, there also lived gopher tortoises. When Shep saw those turtles he would pull hard on the leash and do whatever he could to try and get at the tortoises. For being on the smaller side for a Shepard, Shep was a very strong dog when he had somewhere he wanted to go, like to try and eat a tortoise. Thankfully, we were able to stop him from ever doing this, but boy did he try.

Eventually, I found myself with another person and I moved in with her. The problem was though her house had no AC so we relied on the open doors and the screen porch. As stated before, Shep ran through screens as if they weren’t there. So my parents ended keeping Shep. I missed him more than I could ever say even though I tried to go see him as often as I could.

While with my parents, Shep’s health started to decline due to old age. This didn’t stop Shep from being a happy and loving companion for them though. Shep kept with his usual walking routine of sticking right at my mom’s side with his head on her thigh so much so that dad started to call him Velcro Head. Before the walks, Dad actually got Shep to start playing for a while as they would both jump up and down with each other in the living room. Eventually, though, Shep’s back hips started to pain him to the point where sometimes he would simply collapse on his walks or my parents would have to pick up his back end to help him get up. Shep also became incontinent and thus he ended up wearing adult diapers.

We knew the end was close when Shep was no longer excited for his walks. The pain in his hips made it where he would get to the back path through the grass and just stand there. My mother would ask him where he wanted to go and instead of picking a direction on the path he would turn back for the house to go in. It broke our hearts, but after five years of being the absolute best boy we could have ever had, we knew it was time to say goodbye to him. To this day, I wish he was still around so that my son could have a best friend in what has to be the best dog I have ever known in my life.

Eventually, I want to make some kid’s books to celebrate the life of Shep. I used to have a few written but I’m not sure where they disappeared off to due to a lot of computer problems over the years. One day I would love to see the story of how Shep came to stay with us brought to kids in full color in a children’s book. I also want to use Shep to help teach kids things like proper hygiene, for Shep hated taking baths and I thought this could be a fun subject to use for a story. Another one I have planned is about not being afraid of storms. Shep hated the thunder so much he was known to somehow push through closed doors without breaking them or opening them to curl up in bed with me if it was storming. Shep was also scared of fireworks, one Fourth of July he was on my parent’s back porch as they were out and he tried to eat the door to get back into the house. Needless to say, whenever fireworks were scheduled after that we were home, but I do think this could be an amusing tale to put into print for children as well.

Shep, my wonderful gentle stray, will always be remembered fondly by my family and I hope one day I can share his story with so many others so he can always be remembered as “The Bestest Dog There Ever Was”!